


Monsters Remain Human Beings

by Not_A_Fishie



Category: Scooby Doo - All Media Types, The Magnus Archives (Podcast)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Scooby Doo Fusion, Gen, Mystery, Scooby Doo Gang Are Avatars, Scooby Doo Style Mysteries & Hijinks
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-07-21
Updated: 2020-07-24
Packaged: 2021-03-04 21:41:53
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,260
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25423324
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Not_A_Fishie/pseuds/Not_A_Fishie
Summary: Detective Anderson had been in Section 31 for a year and a half now.  During this short time, he's come across unspeakable horrors and has experienced the supernatural.  However, what remains the biggest mystery yet is the case of four teenagers who travel in their van with their dog.OrThe Scooby Doo Gang are avatars to differing entities but still kick capitalist asshole's asses.
Relationships: Daphne Blake & Velma Dinkley & Fred Jones & Norville "Shaggy" Rogers & Scooby Doo
Comments: 25
Kudos: 65





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> This is my first fanfiction on ao3 and I'm not entirely sure how the formatting and everything works, so uh, please tell me if anything seems off. Who woulda thunk that my first fanfic would be spooky scooby doo.
> 
> TW for mentions of attempted drugging.

The detective walked into the interrogation room, holding a folder and looking like he wanted to be anywhere but there. He seemed to resign himself to his situation, pulling out the fold up chair and sitting across from the handcuffed criminal.  
“Mr Sparks.” He greeted, before opening the folder and skimming through its contents for what felt like the dozenth time. “Charged with robbery, attempted assault and illegally obstructing the construction of a building.” The detective looked up from the folder and at Sparks. Sparks was a rather unassuming man in his middle ages. Tall, with a gaunt face and balding red hair. The man himself was antsy. His eyes kept flicking from the detective to the door and all around the room. His face and body language was guarded, but the detective had been in the business long enough to recognise paranoia in a person. “I’m Detective Anderson. I’ve been assigned your case.”

Sparks remained quiet, fidgeting with his hands and still keeping an eye on the door.  
“Let’s be real, your case is open and shut. You and your associate have pleaded guilty and the case itself, barring the ghost disguises, is fairly standard.” Anderson paused, picking up a blurry photo of a brightly coloured van. Raking a hand through his short hair, he seemed to grow agitated. “I’m not here about your charges though.” Sparks’ eyes flickered back to Anderson, his body posture growing stiffer. “I want to know about those kids, Sparks. What really happened last night?” Sparks clenched his teeth, his gaze lowering to the table.

“You really wouldn’t believe me if I told you. Afterall, I’m just a thief who dresses as a ghost.” Sparks scoffed, “As if that’s the most unbelievable thing about this whole ordeal.”

“What if I told you that whatever happened last night, whatever you saw, was real.” Anderson leaned forward, placing his elbows onto the table and his chin in his hands. “Start from the beginning. When those kids first showed up.” 

Sparks leaned back into the chair, his posture still tense. “The night started off with Mr. Doherty hiring and Rivets showing those two fellas around the place. Well, those two fellas and their dog. And isn’t that just odd? Who the hell brings their dog to work at a construction site?  
And well, I didn’t get a good look at the blond one at the time, but I can describe him fairly well.  
The blond was about average height and wore this orange ascot. Do kids still wear ascots? Doesn’t matter.” Sparks attempted to wave his hand. “I didn’t notice it at first, but he seemed uncannily aware of everything. And the way he walked, it was less of a swagger and more of the way an animal stalks its prey.” He paused, letting out a shuddering breath. “The other guy was at least 6’0 feet tall, with dirty blond hair. Now him, the moment I saw him I felt like there was something off. His neck seemed impossibly thin, I mean seriously thin! It shouldn’t be physically possible for a neck like that to support a head. And don’t even get me started on that dog! It. Spoke.” He ground out, putting emphasis on his words. Sparks didn’t appear any less antsy. In fact, with every word he spoke, he seemed to get more and more frantic.  
“It spoke! And it used its paws like hands! Pulling ropes and tying knots! What sort of fucking dog does that?” The chain that kept his hands cuffed to his table gave a dull clink as he gestured with his hands.

“Not any dog I’m familiar with.” Anderson replied, eyes narrowed and intent.

“Exactly! And it just kept getting weirder and weirder and weirder! Nothing they did made sense! And I-” He took a deep breath before continuing, “And I ignored it, at first. Pretended to not notice the impossibly thin neck or how a Great Dane was walking across narrow, steel beams, nearly 20 stories in the air. I showed the guy, Shaggy, was it? I showed Shaggy the ropes, got him started with punching rivets into some of the beams, help keep them supported. At least, that’s what I told him. In actual fact, I was just trying to keep him preoccupied so I could sneak off. So, I’ve changed into my disguise and I’m standing on a beam above them when the dog just starts...jumping. No, not jumping. Bouncing is more like it. The dog started bouncing, backwards. It bounced across the outer beam, all the way around to the other side of the beam Shaggy was punching rivets into, backwards. Weird, right? But I thought ‘Hey, maybe it’s an old show dog or something,’ so I ignored it. But, you remember what I said earlier? It pulled and tied ropes.” Sparks gave another loud sigh. “I shook it off and started to chase them around. Frighten them off, ya know? And that’s when it somehow got even more impossible. I can’t even explain how it happened, but somehow they both ended up flying through the air and landing back down safely, like a damn cartoon character or something! And then they fall down a story, right where that blond was. I’ll admit, I felt a moment of horror when I saw them fall. I never wanted anyone to actually get hurt, let alone die. So, I hide myself and take a peek down. And they...they were fine! Shaken up, but unharmed!” 

Sparks made eye contact with Anderson. “Landing from one steel beam onto the one below. Alright, not too far-fetched, but remaining uninjured? Not only is it unlikely, it’s not...possible! After that, they had a short discussion, probably talking about “The Spectre” they saw. The blond then....I swear that he looked in my direction. There was no way he could have known my exact location, it was dark and I was a story above them. But he looked right at me, I’m sure of it. I could feel his gaze, pinning me there. For a moment, a moment that seemed to drag on for hours, I could hear my heartbeat. I held my breath and prayed that he wouldn’t find me. I can’t explain it, other than he was a hungry wolf and I was just a helpless deer that he was stalking. Then they just, calmly walked to the lift and left. I stood there for a little while, just trying to steady my frantic breaths. I eventually made my way back to the ground site.”

Sparks continued on to describe the series of events. How he contacted his associate, Rivets, to notify him that part of the gang were on their way to the old manor house. He then took a moment to describe one of the other members of the gang. “I continued to hang around the site, out of sight, just in case they decided to try anything else. I had a good look at the girl during this point of time. It’s...I have trouble remembering her face and features.  
Nothing sticks. I swear her eye colour changed several times! And her skin, it seemed fake somehow. I remember thinking that it reminded me a lot of those department store mannequins. But it couldn’t be, right? I keep trying to tell myself that it was just her makeup. Makeup can do a lot these days, right? Her hair was also off. It didn’t look like real hair. She was wearing purple though. A lot of purple.” He gave a vague gesture, put off by his lack of ability to describe her. “And you’d think that you wouldn’t forget a person like that, but well. I don’t know if I would be able to recognise her if I saw her again.”

Sparks went on to describe more impossible events. How Shaggy and his dog made an entire birthday cake in the matter of seconds it took for him to kick a door in. How he, for reasons he can’t explain, felt compelled to blow out the candles on the cake. How the room was thrown into darkness after all, causing him to book it out of there as soon as possible with the evidence they’d found. He explained the impossible events that led to his capture, just how unlikely the circumstances that lead to it all. “It was here, captured that I finally got a good look at the other woman in their little group. She was short, like really really short. Dark brown hair in a bob and large glasses. Before they unmasked us, there was this gleam in her eye. Like she already knew who we were, what our motives were. I felt completely Known in front of her.”  
He gave a humourless laugh. “My whole shtick was chasing the workers away to get them to quit. And then, when I was standing there, captured in quick drying cement of all things, I realised that not once was I chasing these kids. No. The entire time they were, well not chasing, they were hunting me.”

Detective Anderson, now sitting at his desk with a fresh mug of coffee, shifted through the notes he took during Rivet’s interrogation. He compared Rivet’s description of the kids to Sparks’ realising with a frown that they were nearly exactly the same.  
‘Not just the ravings of a man pissed at a group of kids who outsmarted him then.’ He thought, taking a sip from his coffee. One thing that stuck out from Rivet’s interrogation was how he disguised himself as the ghost Netty Crabbe. To be specific, how Rivets had served a couple of the kids and their dog some tea that had been laced with a drug that should have knocked them out near instantly. Instead, they finished their tea, thanked what they thought was a harmless old lady and then left. 

He rubbed his eyes. Anderson had been a detective for nearly a decade now, but had only been assigned to Section 31 for a year and a half now. Ever since he first encountered these kids when working on a seemingly normal burglary case, he had been assigned all Section 31 cases in the precinct. Which annoyingly meant that if any case seemed to even be remotely out of the norm, then he was given full jurisdiction over it. His only help was a couple of officers who had been assigned to Section 31 a few years previously. Ever since he first met those kids, he’d had three different cases that they seemed to have a major part in helping solve.  
The biggest question he had was, how come he kept finding reference to these teenagers from cases as far back as the 60’s?


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hey guys! So, I was surprised by how the amount of positive feedback I got on the last chapter! So, thank you everyone for commenting! Another short chapter, sorry. I'm pretty new to writing and I'm having trouble getting over that 1k word mark.  
> But, I'm going to try and increase the amount of words per chapter. 
> 
> Forgot to mention it in the last chapter, but the characters and mystery the scooby gang solved comes from The Scooby Doo Show, Season 1 Episode 1. The only character that I own is Detective Anderson.
> 
> TW for mentions of people going missing.

**A Series of Interviews**

**Interview #1 - The Owner of Sam’s Pizza**

_ In the background there’s low, muffled chatter, the sound of some papers being rustled and someone clearing their throat. _

**Anderson:** Thank you for agreeing to this Sam. Do you mind going back over what we discussed?

**Sam:** No, not really. Is it really necessary though? They seemed harmless enough to me, if not...eccentric and a bit strange.

**Anderson:** Yes, unfortunately it is. This information is crucial to an ongoing investigation.

**Sam:** Alright then, if you say so.

_ A sigh and some muffled movement. _

**Sam:** It was...three days ago, I think? On Wednesday night. So, these four teenagers and their dog walk in. I tell them that pets that aren’t service animals are prohibited in the restaurant. And they just...ignore me. At least at first. They walk over to a table near the back and make themselves comfortable. Then one of them, a young girl with red hair and clad in bright purple, smiles at me. And she tells me that the dog is their emotional support Great Dane. Told me that it was Very Important that the dog remain with them. Called it Scooby.  And, for a moment, I almost refused. I mean, it was a really big dog. But then, the way that she was looking at me, well...I knew that I wasn’t going to be kicking them or the dog out after no matter what. The two girls and the blond lad ordered a large pizza to share. And the other kid? He ordered  **_six_ ** large pizzas with everything on top. Had two sides of garlic bread to go with it too. It’s as I’m making the pizzas that I start to notice some, well, peculiarities. How the tall kid with a neck that seemed impossibly thin would sometimes seem to blur. How the short girl with glasses would occasionally meet my eyes and look...Knowing. As if she knew my every sin. And how the moment I turned my back, I forgot the face of the girl clad in purple, only to turn back. I swear her eyes were blue when she walked into the restaurant, but at that moment they were brown!

_ A pause as someone, presumably Sam, gives a shaky sigh. _

**Sam:** I know how it sounds. Maybe I’ve just been overworking myself and it’s all of the stress getting to me. But, there’s something about it that won’t leave me.

**Anderson:** Do you need a moment?

**Sam:** No no, I’m fine. Guess I didn’t realise how much it had been playing on my mind. The blond seemed normal enough, average height, stocky and rather friendly. But, I can’t forget how he walked. Every step seemed more like that of an animal on the prowl. They ate their pizza, where that tall guy packed all that food I have no idea, looked as thin as a twig and like a stiff breeze would blow him over. 

_ A shaky laugh. _

**Sam:** The dog, Scooby, ate three of the ordered pizzas and one of the garlic breads. I...don’t think it’s healthy for a dog to eat that much, let alone a human. I didn’t pay attention to what they talked about, something about needing a job, I guess. Although, and you might think this is just my imagination running wild, but I swear I heard that dog speak! It would understand the conversation and pipe in, I’m sure of it. And, it’s funny. At the time, I didn’t think anything of it.  I heard the dog speak and my mind just went ‘Yup, perfectly normal’. Except it isn’t!

_ A long pause, the chatter and footsteps of customers in the background can still be heard. _

**Sam:** Nothing else sticks out, they paid, then left. That’s it.

_ Another long sigh, sounds of clothing being ruffled. _

**Sam:** Is that all?

**Anderson:** Yes, you’ve been rather helpful. Thank you.

_ The recorder is clicked off. _

  
  
  
  


Detective Anderson finished listening to the interview again. It had been a day since he had that meeting with Sam and he still couldn’t fully wrap his mind around it. When he first met them that one time, he knew something was Off. But every time he nearly grasped what it was, it slipped away like water running through his fingers. It was only after they had skipped town and he was being assigned to Section 31 that it clicked. Somehow, there’s a mental block that stops people from realising just how abnormal they are until after the fact. The only time this changes is when they’re chasing down a criminal. He noticed that in all of the reports he’s read and interrogations he’s participated in, that the criminals were perfectly aware of how unnatural those teenagers were the entire time. Running a hand through his hair, he leaned back into his chair. He grabbed his mug, making to drink from it, only to realise that it was empty. “Tch, damn it.” He placed the mug back down onto the desk with a thump. 

When Anderson took time away from this case, he would often ponder just why he was still obsessing over it. Why was he stressing himself out over something that in the big scheme of things, not that important? Realistically, Anderson knew that there was no real reason to be so focused on it. After all, it wasn’t like they were harming anyone.  He couldn’t stop himself though. It was a mystery wrapped in an enigma, steeped in over 50 years of what the actual fuck and garnished nicely with a side of absolute bullshit. The whole thing enticed him and after spending this much time, energy and the resources on it? He couldn’t let it go.  Standing from his desk, he swiped up his mug and made his way to the coffee machine.  He had no leads or clues as to where the teenagers who drove around in a bright blue and green van, called ‘The Mystery Machine’ of all things, would turn up next. They didn’t seem to plan their travels and would go wherever they seemed to be needed most. Needed most being, assholes who dressed up like it was Halloween to pull off some mind fuckery of a crime.  He almost hoped that they didn’t leave a long trail of bullshit behind them this time.

  
  
  
  


The Mystery Machine rumbled down the long stretch of highway. The countryside seemed to stretch on endlessly with seemingly no sign of civilisation for miles. Daphne turned her gaze from the window to Fred who was at the wheel. In the background she could hear Shaggy and Scooby having a sandwich eating competition, with sandwiches that had popped into reality from seemingly nowhere. Velma complained about the mess they were making, her fingers still tapping away at her laptop’s keyboard. Fred looked alert as always, not in the way someone might be if they were worried or surprised. Rather, he had the look of someone who was searching for something and didn’t want to miss a single clue. 

“There’s a town coming up in roughly 20 miles.” Velma piped up from the back, having decided that Shaggy and Scooby were most likely ignoring her complaints. “Jinkies! Looks like there’s been some reports of missing people recently.” 

“Like zoinks,” Shaggy pauses, licking the sandwich crumbs from his fingers, “That sure is a bummer, man. I sure hope the local police are on it.”

“No actually, it doesn’t look like they are at all!” Velma looked up from her laptop’s screen and adjusted her glasses. Her eyes appeared to be glowing a sickly green. “In fact, the police aren’t doing much more than filing the reports.”

“Jeepers.” Daphne sighed. “Those poor people. Not to mention their families! They must be worried sick!”

“Any ideas on what we’re looking at here, Velma?” Fred called back, eyes never leaving the road.

“Well, get this. Some of the reports have also noted that there was a ‘vampire’ seen lurking outside the victims’ houses a few days before they went missing. A vampire, really?” She sounded exasperated.

“Ruh roh! Vampire? Where?.” Scooby spoke up, his eyes widening and posture growing tense. One might think it odd, that after all these years and everything the gang had experienced, that Scooby could still get frightened by the idea of a vampire.

  
Daphne turned back to Fred, idly listening as Velma explained that, obviously it wasn’t a real vampire. Afterall, you couldn’t spot a vampire just by looking. It was more likely that a creep was disguising themselves as one. Fred’s eyes had narrowed, his grip on the steering wheel tightening.  _ ‘Looks like Freddie’s caught onto the scent.’ _ She mused, idly twirling a strand of woolen hair between her fingers.


End file.
